My Spiritual Diary - Ross Fitzgerald

Do you have spiritual thoughts? Or do they drift away in a fog while you're busy doing something else? My Spiritual Diary is a monthly series on The Spirit of Things where people in all walks of life keep a record of their spiritual thoughts and practice. Sharing their feelings and observations, they focus on the things that give meaning to their lives, in the day to day.

Ross Fitzgerald is a well known journalist, historian and novelist (the Grafton Everest series). He is also a survivor of alcoholism, which led him to psychiatric wards, shock therapy, and suicide attempts. Alcoholics Anonymous not only gave him faith in the power to accept his condition, but the will to help others. AA is a community of people who have faith - in God, in humanity, in the power to overcome the weakest part of themselves.

For The Spirit of Things, Ross has kept a Spiritual Diary from Christmas Day (his birthday) to Australia Day. Ross reads from his Spiritual Diary for the first of RN Summer programs, and in a conversation with Rachael, he reveals that are some emotions that are still too raw to put into words.

Transcript

(First broadcast 5 February 2012).

Rachael Kohn: Do you have spiritual thoughts? Do they drift away in the fog of your busy life? Maybe it's time to write them down. You might find that you get to know yourself better. Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn, this is 'My Spiritual Diary', on The Spirit of Things, RN.

Ross Fitzgerald: [Diary] Thinking about it, I realise that spiritually, I'm a primitive. In fact I say my prayers directly to the Moon and stars and the ocean without any intermediary. And almost every day I wear pinned on my shirt a golden guardian angel given to keep me safe by Em when she was little. Actually I am sure that I'm a primitive, not a pagan, but as I recently said on the radio, if I were to be a Christian, I'd be a Catholic. There's no point in mucking around.

Hello, I'm Ross Fitzgerald, and this is my spiritual diary.

Rachael Kohn: He's a multitalented writer of histories, biographies, newspaper columns, novels, and recently a memoir, called My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic's Journey. Now he's written a diary for The Spirit of Things.

In the coming months a great variety of people will be sharing their spiritual diaries with you and me. Later I'll tell you how you can be part of that process.

Ross Fitzgerald is an astonishingly productive man, but he didn't start out that way. Alcohol addiction had him in its grip, and that fact has shaped his life by turning him into the opposite. Apart from all his writing and even film producing, Ross helps others loosen the bonds of addiction, as a dedicated member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He began his spiritual diary on his birthday.

Ross Fitzgerald: [Diary] It's December 24th, 2011, Christmas Eve. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, I'll be 67. And on Australia Day 2012 I'll be sober 42 years. The fact is that from the age of 15 until I stopped drinking at 24, there was not one birthday (that is to say, not one Christmas Day) that I didn't spend in a mental hospital. The sole exception was my 21st birthday party when I was so drunk that I couldn't remember anything after 11am. And on at least one Christmas Day when I was studying at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio I was so suicidally depressed that I was given electroconvulsive therapy, commonly known as shock treatment.

Yet these days, as an alcoholic with nothing in my blood but blood, I am testimony to what Alcoholics Anonymous can achieve, even with someone as damaged as I once was, even though I am an atheist. Every day for decades, rain, hail or shine, I've read the daily entry in AA's Twenty-Four Hours a Day book, which was given to me by my dear friend Steve from Gordon who has been sober for over 47 years.

Here is today's thought for the day: 'We have been given a new life just because we happened to become alcoholics. We certainly don't deserve this new life. Many people live good lives from their youth on, not getting into serious trouble, yet they have not found all that we have found. We had the good fortune to find Alcoholics Anonymous, and with it, a new way to live.' Am I grateful for the new life that I have learnt in AA? My answer is deeply yes.

Rachael Kohn: Ross, most people who've suffered a really bad patch in the past and have overcome it generally don't want to remember it, especially if they've come out the other side okay. But you, you've been sober 42 years and yet you call yourself an alcoholic. Not just at AA meetings and those open confessions but also generally speaking to other people. It is that acceptance of being an alcoholic, the first step of the 12-step AA process, is that an acceptance of vulnerability? Does that mean you are permanently vulnerable?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, I'm permanently at risk, because what most alcoholic men or women do is to drink, and I need to be aware that the most important thing in my life is that I don't drink alcohol or take other drugs and that I attend AA and do the best I can about that program of recovery. It's certainly true that forgetfulness is a very helpful part of human evolution. If we didn't forget the dreadful pain that we suffered, we wouldn't get out of bed. But it's not true for alcoholism. Alcoholic men and women need to remember organically where we've come from, otherwise we would soon forget and soon forget the dreadful effect that alcohol and other drugs had upon us. So it's important to remember organically where we've come from, or where I've come from.

Rachael Kohn: But that remembering of failure, as it were, is really hard on the ego, and I wonder whether AA is teaching us something about the fact that vulnerability can actually be ironically the source of our strength. That is, weakness can be a stepping stone to strength.

Ross Fitzgerald: That's absolutely true, and it's really only by surrendering to the fact that we're powerless over alcohol...and most alcoholics can't get and stay sober through an isolated exercise of the will. Most alcoholic men and women need help. AA is by far the most successful agency, so I often tell people, well, why not avail yourself of the best.

[Diary] Today, after our Christmas Eve meeting finished at 3:30pm, we held a party attended by 40 members from all over Sydney. The reason for this party is that for many sober alcoholics, and especially those men and women relatively new to the fellowship, Christmas can often be a difficult and lonely time. How fortunate we are as members of the AA fellowship to have other sober alcoholics who can understand us and to whom we can confide, and to have such a network of support to cradle us during the difficult times that we all face. What a contrast to the atomised existence that I led when in the grip of alcoholism and other drug addiction.

This is the first time in almost three decades that I've kept a diary of my internal and external life. When I was sober for 12 years I saw a Jungian analyst in London. An integral part of this therapy was that I kept a daily journal and recorded all my dreams. Shortly before Lyndal and Em and I returned to Brisbane, I asked Dr Costello how he thought I was doing. He said, 'I think you're busy in the fog, Ross.' A couple of years later I entitled my third Grafton Everest fiction Busy in the Fog.

Christmas Day, 2011, my 67th birthday. I still remain an ardent atheist, but oblivion? At the end of life, to be extinguished? Not just to be peripheral and marginalised but to be gone utterly. Is that too much to bear? As my friend Carl Harrison-Ford tells me, however unhealthy an attitude, he finds mortality such an affront. Perhaps my dread of nothingness is due to the fact that in the past I used to drink to and for oblivion, to try and block out all those dreadful feelings of self-hatred and lack of worth. In fact I'm not haunted by any fear of dying, its death itself that terrifies me. Thinking about Lyndal's death, and even more so, about our only child Em's, especially should they pre-decease me, fills me with dread and a sense of extreme vulnerability.

But this angst in no way leads me to a life of religious beliefs and faith. As I said, delivering the eulogy for my Sydney AA sponsor Jimmy from Kingsford, he remained an atheist to the end, thank God.

Rachael Kohn: When you kept a diary for your Jungian analyst way back when...how many years ago was that?

Ross Fitzgerald: Thirty years ago.

Rachael Kohn: That was about documenting your dreams. This spiritual diary is very much about documenting your daily working life. Which one was easier or harder?

Ross Fitzgerald: This one was harder because I am more committed now to telling the utter truth. Recording my dreams I found quite easy. And what Dr Costello said to me when I asked at the end, 'How do you think I'm doing?' He said, 'I think you're busy in the fog.' I have a tendency to be busy in the fog, but I think I'm more centred now than I was 30 years ago.

Rachael Kohn: Being truthful is really difficult when you actually write it down and see it in black and white. Did you find that experience confronting, challenging?

Ross Fitzgerald: Absolutely, but you see I had a mother who would lie when telling the truth would do. I understand why that was because my elder brother died in my father's arms when the babe was only six months old, and they both tried to kill themselves a number of times. And my mother, if she gave you a trinket she'd say it was gold. And not having any bedrock of reality is a very difficult thing for a child, which is why the honesty in AA is so important, and the fact that what attracted me most and attracts me most to Lyndal, apart from her being extremely beautiful, is that she always tells the truth. Also she is not very interested in illness. I remember saying to her about a year into our marriage, 'I don't feel very well,' and she said, 'Darling, the pyramids were built by people who didn't feel very well.'

Rachael Kohn: It's great to live with someone like that, a rock.

Ross Fitzgerald: Absolutely, because if she had indulged my narcissistic tendencies, we wouldn't have survived a year, let alone 36.

[Diary] Each daily reflection from the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book at the very least grounds me in the now, which in reality is all we have. But I consciously have to work at living in the day, each day of my life. Just as I have to work at letting go of my many fears and anxieties, especially about what might befall Lyndal and Em and our mischievous West Highland white terrier Maddie who whirls with delight at seeing me, especially when I arrive home at night.

At least once a day I recite the AA Serenity Prayer, although at first I couldn't even say the word 'God' which begins it. Thus for years I substituted the word 'please' instead of 'God'. These days I say, 'Please God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.' Somehow this prayer, which is a shorter version of a prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr, speaks deeply to almost all alcoholics I know.

Rachael Kohn: The Serenity Prayer is central to the AA meeting, and I guess a lot of people know it. I guess one of the most extraordinary things about it is that it's so contrary to the current ethos; you accept the things you cannot change. Today's ethos is; there is no can't, there is nothing you cannot do.

Ross Fitzgerald: That is of course nonsense and very dangerous. It's interesting, the Serenity Prayer, it speaks deeply to almost every alcoholic I've ever met. There's something quite profound about that prayer, and even if you're an atheist like me, who originally couldn't say the word 'God' that begins it, I used to say 'please grant me the serenity', and these days I still say, 'Please God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.' A very profound prayer, that, and it helps almost all alcoholics that I know.

Rachael Kohn: Another saying that has crept into the lingua franca from AA is 'letting go, letting God'. That's a profound invitation to surrender. Who do you let in? Who do you surrender to, or what do you surrender to?

Ross Fitzgerald: I suppose I surrender to the reality that I can't stay sober on my own, that I need help. It's very unclear to me what I surrender to, but it's certainly true that the meetings that I go to, the AA movement as a whole is a power greater than myself. And letting go is...you see, the isolated exercise of the will almost never works over the long term with alcoholism and addiction. Over the long term most alcoholics need to remember where we've come from and to realise that almost all of us need help.

I mean, in my case, if I stop going to AA, even for a week, deliberately, that would be a symbol that I'm doing this on my own, and what I've learnt deeply is that I'm not doing this on my own, I'm only sober because of the help of other members of AA, the AA movement as a whole. But I do say my prayers especially to the ocean, the Sun, the Moon and the stars, that's why I'm certain that I'm a primitive. I'm not a pagan, but I'm a primitive.

Rachael Kohn: Ross Fitzgerald is sharing his spiritual diary with you, right here on The Spirit of Things. You're on RN, and I'm Rachael Kohn.

Everyone's diary is going to be different, and in the coming months we'll see how the spiritual life of Australians is not only diverse but sophisticated, creative, and surprisingly intense.

Ross Fitzgerald: [Diary] Actually, I love my dog much more than I like most people. Believe it or not, Maddie, our Westie, actually smiles when she sees me. Thinking about it, I realise that spiritually I am a primitive. In fact, I say my prayers directly to the Moon and stars and the ocean, without any intermediary. And almost every day I wear pinned on my shirt a golden guardian angel given to keep me safe by Em when she was little. Actually I'm sure that I'm a primitive, not a pagan, but as I recently said on the radio, if I were to be a Christian, I'd be a Catholic. There's no point in mucking around.

When I say that I am an atheist, I mean that I am not a theist. But in AA's language I do believe in a power greater than myself, if only the AA group to which I belong, the other groups that I tend, and indeed the AA movement as a whole. I don't believe that I'm sober because of an isolated exercise of the will. In contrast, I believe that I'm only sober because I realise, in the words of AA's first suggested step of recovery, that on my own I am powerless over alcohol and that I need to surrender to that crucial fact each and every day.

If I am to remain sober, I believe that I need to regularly attend AA meetings and to consciously do what I can about AA's suggested program of recovery. That is to say, I'm only free of alcohol and other drugs not because I am smart or wilful or clever, but because I have accepted the need for me to surrender on a daily basis. In the words of Broken Hill Jack's sponsor, the late Bobbie Delaney, who was Australia's light heavyweight boxing champion, 'I'm not a retired alcoholic, I'm a defeated one.'

Rachael Kohn: You are in fact a writer, that's what you do for a living, as a historian, as a journalist, and also as a novelist. So I wonder whether in writing about yourself, do you ever feel like you're a character in a novel?

Ross Fitzgerald: Not when I've kept this diary for you, Rachael. Some people would say I am a character in my novels. That's not quite true, but Dr Grafton Everest to the unseeing eye has some connection with the sort of person...my negativity. Grafton Everest is what I could be if I let myself go. So there's a new Grafton Everest novel out called Fool's Paradise: Life in an Altered State, where…I can let a secret out of the bag, where Grafton Everest finishes up becoming the premier of Mangoland.

Rachael Kohn: Is that like Queensland?

Ross Fitzgerald: It's a fictitious version of...

Rachael Kohn: You've actually written about your life as an alcoholic in the book My Name Is Ross, and I wondered how documenting that story of your descent into alcoholism as a young man, as really a teenager...

Ross Fitzgerald: From 14.

Rachael Kohn: …from 14 onward, from a difficult family life, as you've already alluded to, how writing the spiritual diary was different from that.

Ross Fitzgerald: The reason I decided to write the memoir was that I got diagnosed that I was bleeding from the brain in four places, and it looked a bit iffy for quite a while there. And I thought...it sounds melodramatic now...

Rachael Kohn: Well, indeed!

Ross Fitzgerald: It sounds melodramatic now, but I decided that before I died, perhaps I should write down my story in the hope that it can benefit others. I found writing my memoir,My Name Is Ross: An Alcoholic's Journey, the hardest thing that I've ever done in my life. And it was important, again, that I tell the truth, so the portrayal of myself is far from eulogistic. I come out of it looking rather like Lord Byron; mad, bad and dangerous to know. All of those things were true. Although I realise now that I was sick. Alcoholics aren't bad people that need to get good, alcoholics are sick people who can recover a day at a time if we don't pick up that first drink. It's the first drink that does the damage for an alcoholic person, not the seventh of the 28th. And AA's got the numbers, but a lot of people are still not receptive to the fact that it is an illness and that the only long-term hope for most alcoholics is total abstinence.

Rachael Kohn: And alcohol provides a kind of anaesthetising of the pain of life? Is that what kind of explains your descent into alcoholism?

Ross Fitzgerald: That's absolutely true. I mean, the quick précis of my life is if I hadn't found alcohol at 14, I would have suicided at 17. But if I hadn't got released from alcohol at 24 I wouldn't have made 25. Unlike a lot of my friends, alcohol never made me feel as good as other people or better than other people. As a little boy I felt like a garbage tip.

Rachael Kohn: Why?

Ross Fitzgerald: I think because of my mother's lying and the fact that she'd say every now and again, 'Do you see the brightest star in all of the skies?' And I'd look up and she'd say, 'That's your brother Rodney.' And I realised I had a burning resentment against this poor dead brother.

Rachael Kohn: And the desire to be loved more.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes. What alcohol did was to hold down the pain of being myself enough to survive for a bit. But of course alcoholism is a progressive illness and eventually, it didn't matter how much I drank or how many hundreds of tablets I took, because I never shot up, I put it all in the mouth, it didn't work any more, it didn't anaesthetise me anymore. I realised that what I was searching for in alcohol was to be obliterated and to be anaesthetised because I found that the pain almost too much to bear. My mum and dad both tried to kill themselves a number of times when I was a child and I can remember...I think it was my mother said to me, 'Your father's tried to kill himself,' and I went to bed. And I used to think [teary]...I'm sorry…

Rachael Kohn: No, it's all right.

Ross Fitzgerald: Sorry…

Rachael Kohn: That pain is still there.

Ross Fitzgerald: Of course…and I went to bed…and I went to bed, and for years I thought I was uncaring, but that's not true. It's very overwhelming for a child to handle that.

Rachael Kohn: Yes. Isn't it more that they weren't caring enough for you?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, I mean, they tried. They were very damaged. My mother blamed herself for the death of Rodney, my brother, because she tried to have him aborted. And although that didn't make any physiological sense, it made psychological sense, and she never went to the funeral [teary]…I'm sorry, I still find this very difficult…see, most people wouldn't know that I feel like that. Most people wouldn't realise that even now it's extremely difficult…and now I can't remember what I was saying…yes, she never, ever went to the grave, never went to the funeral.

Rachael Kohn: Did you?

Ross Fitzgerald: I only found the grave when my father had died. And I realise now…I couldn't understand why all of our relatives were Catholics and my father no longer went to church, but I realise now that he went along with my mother's attempt to abort the child.

Rachael Kohn: Why didn't that experience and reflecting back on it make you a Catholic or make you a Christian, a believer? Why did it turn you to the opposite?

Ross Fitzgerald: Well, what happened was that because my father was a lapsed Catholic and my mother an atheist I got sent to the Church of England. For a little while there I got quite interested in Christianity, but I came to Sunday school wearing a hand-me-down Xavier College blazer, a Catholic blazer, and they wouldn't let me in. It's hard to believe that sort of Catholic/Protestant stuff but that was in the early 1950s. So I stopped, and fairly soon after that I became an atheist and I remain an atheist in the sense that I'm not a theist.

Rachael Kohn: When you write down in black and white 'I am an atheist', does that fill you with confidence and certainty or do you find that you want to qualify it, redefine it over the years?

Ross Fitzgerald: When I say I'm an atheist, I mean I'm not a theist. As we mentioned, I say my prayers directly to the Sun and the stars and the Moon and the ocean. I find the idea of death difficult to cope with. I don't find dying difficult but I find the idea of being obliterated utterly...and, as my friend Carl Harrison-Ford said to me, that however dubious the feeling is, he finds death to be such an affront. But I'm not at all keen on formal religions, although for a very brief and chaotic period I taught biblical studies...

Rachael Kohn: Biblical studies?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes, we won't go into that, but one of my favourite lines from the Bible is 'In my father's house there are many mansions,' which means there is room for us all. And that means that in Alcoholics Anonymous there is room for Christians and atheists and agnostics and God-botherers and Jains and whatever.

Rachael Kohn: Does that experience of Alcoholics Anonymous, where you come together formally in a collective fellowship in which you are helping each other, confessing your weakness, confessing in a sense the sins of the past and the resolve of the future or the now, is that not like a religious congregation? Is that not like a church?

Ross Fitzgerald: Indeed it is, and as I often tell people...that Steve from Gordon taught me that he and I live under the influence of one spirit or the other; the spirit of alcohol or the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous. And there's something extremely powerful about sober alcoholics telling the truth in the structure of AA, where the meetings start on time and finish on time, and within that structure sober alcoholics talk about what we used to be like, what happened, and what we're like now.

At the meeting that you came to, Rachael, at South Sydney, you'll see that no matter a person's level of education, most alcoholics in that structure are extremely eloquent, and I think that eloquence is because they feel safe or we feel safe, but also because purity of mind is the capacity to will one thing. And we're all there for the one reason. And it is really only other alcoholics that can understand the depth, where we've come from, the sort of people that we are.

[Diary] Lyndal seems somehow solid and sure in this ever-changing world. She isn't labile and flighty, yet the thought of her death terrifies me and porridges my brain. I'm not sure what Lyndal wants; a funeral service, flowers. I know she wants to be cremated, but what to do with her ashes; to be scattered? But if so, when or where? Perhaps on her garden.

My doctor often repeats these lines from Groucho Marx, 'Most problems in my life haven't been so much hard times coming as soft times going.' A few months ago when I confided that I thought I was getting more neurotic, my friend Gerard Henderson replied, 'That's scarcely possible.'

Rachael Kohn: This is the monthly series 'My Spiritual Diary' on The Spirit of Things. And our diarist is columnist and author Ross Fitzgerald who chose this music by Marianne Faithful, who was also in the grip of addiction. You're tuned to RN, or you're listening online.

[Music: 'The Ballad of Lucy Jordan', Marianne Faithful]

Rachael Kohn: Does keeping a spiritual diary make you feel more neurotic or less neurotic?

Ross Fitzgerald: It's quite a good line that, when I said to Gerard Henderson, 'I think I'm becoming more neurotic,' and he said, 'That's scarcely possible, Ross.' I think keeping a spiritual diary gave me a sense...doing this spiritual diary for you gave me a sense of how lucky I am, a sense of gratitude. Broken Hill Jack once said to me years ago, he said, 'Do you know the definition of a fortunate person?' And I didn't. And he said, 'A fortunate person is a person who thinks they are fortunate.' And I think to be grateful and to have a deep sense of gratitude is a very healthy thing for someone like myself.

Rachael Kohn: Ross Fitzgerald has overcome the 'demon drink,' but some childhood demons are never entirely extinguished. This is 'My Spiritual Diary', a monthly series on The Spirit of Things. I'm Rachael Kohn, and I wonder, would you keep a spiritual diary? Don't let those spiritual thoughts and deeds evaporate into thin air, you might discover something about yourself that you never knew before. On our website you can find a link to POOL, ABC's social media website. Maybe there we can build a community of spiritual diarists.

On New Year's Eve there's one tune that's always sung.

[Music: 'Auld Lang Syne']

Ross Fitzgerald: [Diary] It's December 31st and Lyndal, Em and I have been invited to Clover Moore the Sydney Lord Mayor's New Year's Eve party, held right on the Opera House overlooking Sydney Harbour, with a magnificent view of the fireworks. But as this New Year's Eve is a Saturday, I'm back at the South Sydney 2pm AA meeting. Which reminds me that, as the Mahabharata begins, 'In the world of space and time, nothing matters very much.' To me this means that the most important factor of my life is that I am sober and, as a consequence, that I am a good enough husband, father, work and friend. This doesn't mean that other things don't matter at all but that everything else is contingent on my sobriety and my good relations in AA. This fundamental fact places everything else in its true reality.

It's a very difficult business for an alcoholic man or woman to get and stay sober and to somehow negotiate the external world and the carnival between our ears un-anaesthetised, and without seriously thinking about killing ourselves. This is in part because many of us, no matter how we might seem on the outside are often extremely vulnerable in our first few years of not drinking.

At today's meeting I quoted a few lines from the book Alcoholics Anonymous, after which our fellowship gets its name. A body badly burned by alcohol does not often recover overnight, nor do twisted thinking and depression vanish in a twinkling. How true is that! Even now from time to time I still have a pronounced tendency to panic, yet in the words of an old Russian proverb I made up; all that trembles does not fall.

Rachael Kohn: New Year's Eve, it's a strange occasion when you're supposed to celebrate the passing of the old year and the beginning of a new one. But you quote the Mahabharata, 'In the world of space and time, nothing matters very much. But what does matter is your sobriety and good relations. I think you've turned the secular New Year into a spiritual one, an opportunity for gratitude.

Ross Fitzgerald: I suppose, yes, but...a lot of atheists are grateful. It's just not true to say that there are no atheists in the foxholes, there have been plenty of atheists in the foxholes. But normally I go to bed early on New Year's Eve because I find it a difficult time. But because Emily had come out from New York, and Clover Moore very kindly invited us to her New Year's Eve party, we went. I don't think I'll be going again, not because it wasn't a wonderful party but because it dragged on interminably from eight o'clock and we didn't get home until two o'clock.

Rachael Kohn: A lot of people find New Year's Eve pretty depressing, they really don't know what they should be feeling. But I would imagine as a former alcoholic or, as you call yourself, a recovered alcoholic...

Ross Fitzgerald: Recovering, I don't think I've recovered because were I to start to drink again I'd finish up very swiftly where I was at, which is at the doors of insanity and death. I spent a lot of time in mental hospitals, I had lots and lots of shock therapy.

Rachael Kohn: Well, New Year's Eve is certainly a slippery road to that for a lot of people, and I would imagine just generally, it doesn't even have to be New Year's Eve, it can be any old day in the week, the constant pressure to drink, to be sociable, to express your fellowship through the exchange of alcohol must make your life a constant challenge.

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes, and it's interesting, I'll be at a party and I will have had my fourth of bitter lemon, and somebody will come up and say, 'What's the matter, don't you drink?' And I often say, 'What you think I'm doing? Eating a sandwich?' But it's so powerful, the connection between drinking and alcohol, 'don't you drink' means 'don't you drink alcohol'. So one has to be vigilant, and that's why almost all the AA meetings are open every day so that they are open on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, New Year's Day to provide a sense of security.

Rachael Kohn: And those are the days when families come together, that isolation can be particularly painful.

Ross Fitzgerald: That's true. In my case, had I not severed, in the main, my relationship with my mother, I probably wouldn't have stayed sober. I would have rather that she and I loved and liked each other, but we didn't. And it's hard to explain. My father died when I was three years sober in Melbourne and I was up here in Sydney, and Jimmy from Kingsford said to me, 'Stay no longer than two hours after the funeral.' And I had all these dreadful pretender aunties, witch-like aunties, like Aunty Chloris, and I remember Aunty Chloris said to me, 'Well, now that your father has died, you'll be coming down here to look after your wonderful mother.' And I said, 'Well, actually Chloris, I'll be gone in 45 minutes time.'

Often in order to stay sober we have to do things that are very painful, but our lives are on the line. And it's true...I mean, familial relationships for almost anybody can be difficult at Christmas time, but it can be especially the case with alcoholics, especially when we're in our first couple of years.

One of the founders of AA in Australia was a Sydney psychiatrist called Dr Sylvester Minogue, and I remember when I was only two years sober, old man Minogue said he'd never come across an alcoholic man or woman that got anywhere near emotionally or mentally together under three to five years. And I know some of the young people at that meeting thought what a silly old fart he was, but I thought thank goodness for that. And what he said was true and it gave me great comfort. It's so important for us not to be discouraged because often when alcoholics stop drinking, all hell breaks loose because we are no longer anaesthetised, and so all of these feelings come to the fore, which is why…I went to a meeting of AA every night of the first five years because I was very, very damaged.

Rachael Kohn: Did your mother ever experience, Ross, her son as a sober, upstanding young man? Were you ever able to come together and..?

Ross Fitzgerald: Oh yes, I would go to see her but no more than 42 days at a time. I had to get out again. My father, who was a non-drinker, my father played football for Collingwood but he never drank a teaspoonful because his father died of active alcoholism, but my dad was so proud, he'd tell everybody [teary]…

Rachael Kohn: Your father was so proud of you?

Ross Fitzgerald: Yes, by the fact that I was sober, yes. And he'd actually bring a couple of workmates that had a problem...it's a funny world, you know. Yesterday I was going up in the lift in Bondi...Friday I was going up in the lift to the seventh floor, and a bloke got in and he pressed the sixth floor. And I just said, 'How are you going?' And he said, 'I can't stop drinking.' Isn't that amazing! So we had a bit of a chat and I told him about some local meetings. But that was the transaction; 'Hello, how are you doing?' And then he said, 'I can't stop drinking, I've got the shakes, it's terrible.' It's a huge problem.

Rachael Kohn: Your relationship with your father is still very much alive and active within you, isn't it. Do you talk to him mentally?

Ross Fitzgerald: I mentally more talk to my sponsor in AA. I know psychoanalytic theory says the sound of the mother's voice presents a great sense of safety and calm. The sound of my mother's voice I found very difficult. But the sound of my sponsor's voice was a source of great calm and reassurance. I have to say, Rachael, that I can no longer actually remember his voice, but what I do have is his example.

Rachael Kohn: And was that a good example?

Ross Fitzgerald: It was a wonderful example, that no matter how long he was sober he continued to go to the meetings. There's something about me that brings out criticism in others, but my sponsor, Lee from Melbourne, never criticised me once, which is remarkable.

[Diary] New Year's Day, 2012. My current medical condition reminds me of the awful time when in Brisbane at the age of eight our only child Em was diagnosed with a very virulent form of childhood cancer. It turned out that a number of young European girls had a condition which mimicked leukaemia, with their platelet count at first dropping alarmingly, but then over time righting itself. This is what happened to Em, thank goodness. And now that she is 29, she has no signs of leukaemia.

Those few weeks when it seemed that Em was dying were the worst that I've ever felt in my life. But even then, what Steve from Gordon taught me was true; nothing can damage or hurt me more than did drinking and taking drugs. Indeed, although my actions were far from perfect, even then I was of some use, which is something I never was when I was drinking. And the reality is that if I stay free of alcohol and other drugs I can be of some use still.

Rachael Kohn: We're coming near to the end of Ross Fitzgerald's spiritual diary on a day that's annually marked by festivities across the country. Is it all forced frivolity or genuine community? This is what it prompted in Ross:

Ross Fitzgerald: [Diary] Australia Day, Thursday January 26th, 2012. To seek out happiness seems such a foolish and futile quest. At best, happiness is a byproduct of living the right kind of life. As it happens, happiness has never been one of my buzzwords. Happy, snappy, who cares. Speaking of happiness, this morning a little girl said to me, 'Dr Ross, do you know that six out of seven dwarfs aren't happy?' How cute and clever is that. Think about it.

Today's entry ends with a question; have I entirely given up that dependence on drinking? Again, my answer is a capital YES. The reality is that as an alcoholic I'm a person who was either under the influence of one spirit or the other, the spirit of alcohol or the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous. My favourite poet John Keats once wrote in a letter to a friend, 'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affection and the truth of imagination.' For me, the holiness of the heart's affection refers to that which I deeply love, Lyndal, Em, Maddie our dog, and AA. While the truth of imagination means that I, like other alcoholics, can get and stay sober in this world and consequently be of use and value.

Appropriately enough, with my AA lawyer friend Mikey, I spend Australia Day night at the Randwick Thursday 8.00 to 9.30pm meeting, which in early sobriety I used to regularly frequent before I left for Brisbane to take a lectureship at Griffith University in January 1977. Tonight I celebrated being 42 years sober, which is wonderful, and about which I am more pleased than anyone else I know. It is wonderful, it's fantastic, but it has caught the train to Melbourne, it's finished. What matters is what am I going to do from now on. And the great reality for me, as for all other members of the AA movement, is that from this day, from this specific place and time I need never drink alcohol or take other drugs again. For a person like myself, isn't this opportunity such a blessing, such a gift?

Rachael Kohn: That line you quote from the poem by John Keats, 'I'm certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affection and the truth of imagination', I wonder whether Keats' poetry and also The Big Bookof AlcoholicsAnonymous is something like your holy scripture?

Ross Fitzgerald: I think that's probably true, because the holiness of the heart's affection means that which I love most of all, which is Lyndal my wife, Emily our daughter, Maddie our dog, and the AA movement as a whole. And for me the truth of imagination is the reality that, like other members of AA, I can stop drinking, I can stay stopped, I can somehow negotiate the world without wanting to kill myself, and that I can be of some use and value. Keats is my favourite poet. That's a beautiful line.

Rachael Kohn: It reminds me actually of the Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper, who wrote, 'The natural habitat for truth is in interpersonal relationships.' It seems to me what you have described there, about love and the holiness of the hearts affection, is about those relationships that you have either in the home or with your fellow members of Alcoholics Anonymous, that you regularly consolidate.

Ross Fitzgerald: Or with my dog, because when I come home at night Maddie whirls with delight. That doesn't happen a lot in my other life.

Rachael Kohn: Being of some use, that's a really important value for you.

Ross Fitzgerald: It is, because I was so useless. When I was in all of those mental hospitals, when I was having all that shock therapy I was of no use to anyone, I wasn't of any use to myself, but it is important to be of use. I'm sure Freud was right when he said the secret to life is love and work.

Rachael Kohn: Love and work. He was a pretty dour guy though. I also think that one of the things that comes out in your spiritual diary is your recognition of moments that make you happy, whether it's a little girl's observation about dwarfs or whether it's your dog whirling around.

Ross Fitzgerald: Or for some reason seeing a willy wagtail always cheers me up, it gives me a great sense of joy.

Rachael Kohn: Me too.

Ross Fitzgerald: I should have written that.

Rachael Kohn: It makes me think of this morning on the way to work I was feeling rather heavy and tired, and as I was walking along suddenly I saw a little button and on it it said 'Laugh'. And I burst out laughing and thought what a wonderful gift this is.

Ross Fitzgerald: Laughter is a wonderful gift.

Rachael Kohn: And you certainly provide all of that in your novels, your satirical novels. Humour is pretty important to you.

Ross Fitzgerald: It is indeed, because I could hardly...I hardly could smile for the last couple of years of my drinking. Actually the first year in AA was a difficult time. So to be able to laugh is a great gift, especially to laugh at yourself.

Rachael Kohn: Laugh at yourself, and also make others laugh.

Ross Fitzgerald: Sure.

Rachael Kohn: Well Ross, you've had to think a lot about your life, how it went off the rails and how you got back on them, with the help of others…

Ross Fitzgerald: Except it's a new life, it is not the old life showing up, it's a new way of life. Because I really wouldn't want one second of my previous life back.

Rachael Kohn: But in thinking about it and writing about it in a book, in a memoir, as well as in this spiritual diary, it makes me wonder whether just being conscious of one's life, the narrative, the story, how it went up, how it went down and how it went back up again and where it might go in the future is something that we could all cultivate a bit more, to be aware or conscious of the story of our lives. Because in doing that we might also experience a degree of gratitude.

Ross Fitzgerald: That's certainly true, and I need to consciously be aware of what other people need. I'm essentially still a narcissist by nature, so I need to consciously be aware of other people's needs, and I need to be consciously aware of just how fortunate I am, how enormously lucky I am. Had I not stopped drinking at 24, I would have been dead at 25. And I often say all of my problems today are AA's fault. You know, I wouldn't be concerned about my daughter, my wife, about a film I'm making, about books, because I wouldn't have been around. I literally wouldn't have made 25 years of age had I not got released from alcohol and other drugs. And interestingly the word 'released' is a metaphor, isn't it.

Rachael Kohn: But it's a sweet burden you're carrying.

Ross Fitzgerald: Indeed, indeed.

Rachael Kohn: It's been a delight having you on The Spirit of Things Ross Fitzgerald, thank you for letting us into your spiritual diary.

Ross Fitzgerald: Thanks for asking me Rachael.

Rachael Kohn: Ross Fitzgerald is a writer extraordinaire, not only an historian and biographer (most recently of the comedian Austen Tashus) but he's also the author of the Grafton Everest series of satirical novels. His latest is Fool's Paradise: Life in an Altered State. And if it's anything like his previous ones, it's very funny. There's a link to Ross' books on our website.

Well, Ross met the challenge of keeping a spiritual diary for The Spirit of Things, now, can you? Why not start your spiritual reflections and upload them to POOL, ABC's social website. Just put The Spirit of Things in your search engine and off you go.

Next month's spiritual diary will be completely different, as you'd expect from one of Australia's leading musicians, Jane Rutter. The French-trained flautist is a dreamy nymph, touched by the spirit of Sufis, with a poetic imagination that impels her music and her life. Jane Rutter is our next spiritual diarist on The Spirit of Things in a month's time. Join me Rachael Kohn, next week, right here on RN.

Guests

Professor Ross Fitzgerald

is an historian, author and columnist. His most recent book is My Name is Ross: An Alcoholic's Journey (2010).